- 112th Day of 2013 / 253 Remaining
- 60 Days Until The First Day of Summer
- Sunrise:6:23
- Sunset:7:52
- 13 Hours 29 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise:4:49pm
- Moon Set:4:19am
- Moon’s Phase:88 %
- The Next Full Moon
- April 25 @ 12:59pm
- Full Pink Moon
- Full Sprouting Grass Moon
- Full Egg Moon
- Full Fish Moon
This moon’s name came from the herb moss pink, or wild ground phlox, which is one of the earliest widespread flowers of the spring. Other names for this month’s celestial body include the Full Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon, and among coastal tribes the Full Fish Moon, because this was the time that the shad swam upstream to spawn.
- Tides
- High:9:06am/9:28pm
- Low:3:09am/3:02pm
- Rainfall (measured July 1 – June 30)
- This Year:16.32
- Last Year:15.30
- Normal To Date:22.65
- Annual Seasonal Average:23.80
- Holidays
- Earth Day
- National Jelly Bean Day
- Oklahoma Day-Oklahoma
- UN International Mother Earth Day
- On This Day In …
- 1500 --- Portuguese navigator Pedro Alvares Cabral discovered Brazil.
- 1509 --- Henry VIII became king of England following the death of his father, Henry VII.
- 1793 --- Philadelphia played host to the first circus attended by George Washington. It would be years before Congress provided a two-ring circus of its own for the President!
1876 --- An eight-team National League began its inaugural season on this day in 1876. A crowd of 3,000 watched as Boston defeated Philadelphia 6-5. The opening season consisted of 70 games -- a lot less than the 162 game season (barring strikes) played today -- and no playoffs! These are the cities that were home to the original eight National League teams: Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Hartford, Louisville, New York, Philadelphia and St. Louis. Today, Boston is in the American League, Hartford and Louisville don’t have teams in either league, and Atlanta, Montreal, Houston, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Colorado and Florida join the rest of the original teams as members of baseball’s National League.
1878 --- The first Egg Roll was held on the grounds of the White House in Washington, DC. The first president on hand for the first Egg Roll was Rutherford B. Hayes. He and his wife Lucy made it an official event. It has been held every year since, except during the war years of WWI and WWII through 1953. The president who brought the tradition back in 1953 was Dwight D. Eisenhower.
- 1889 --- At noon, the sound of a gun shot was the only signal needed for thousands of settlers to rush into the Oklahoma territory to claim their pieces of land. The U.S. Federal government had purchased almost two million acres of land in Central Oklahoma from the Crete and Seminole Indians and opened it up on this day to the settlers to claim their stakes. The purchase was made under pressure of cattle ranchers who needed more land for grazing.
- 1914 --- Babe Ruth made his pitching debut with the Baltimore Orioles.
- 1915 --- The New York Yankees wore pinstripes and the hat-in-the-ring logo for the first time.
- 1915 --- German forces shock Allied soldiers along the western front by firing more than 150 tons of lethal chlorine gas against two French colonial divisions at Ypres, Belgium. This was the first major gas attack by the Germans, and it devastated the Allied line.
- 1940 --- The first all-Chinese commercial radio program was broadcast over KSAN radio in San Francisco, CA. Later, KSAN would become a pioneer in playing ‘underground rock’ music.
- 1945 --- Adolf Hitler, learning from one of his generals that no German defense was offered to the Russian assault at Eberswalde, admits to all in his underground bunker that the war is lost and that suicide is his only recourse. Almost as confirmation of Hitler's assessment, a Soviet mechanized corps reaches Treuenbrietzen, 40 miles southwest of Berlin, liberates a POW camp and releases, among others, Norwegian Commander in Chief Otto Ruge.
- 1954 --- Senator Joseph McCarthy begins hearings investigating the United States Army, which he charges with being "soft" on communism. These televised hearings gave the American public their first view of McCarthy in action, and his recklessness, indignant bluster, and bullying tactics quickly resulted in his fall from prominence.
- 1966 --- "Wild Thing" by the British band the Troggs was released in the U.S.
- 1969 --- The Who gave their first complete live performance of the rock opera "Tommy" at a show in Dolton, England.
1970 --- Earth Day, an event to increase public awareness of the world's environmental problems, is celebrated in the United States for the first time. Millions of Americans, including students from thousands of colleges and universities, participated in rallies, marches, and educational programs. Earth Day was the brainchild of Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, a staunch environmentalist who hoped to provide unity to the grassroots environmental movement and increase ecological awareness. "The objective was to get a nationwide demonstration of concern for the environment so large that it would shake the political establishment out of its lethargy," Senator Nelson said, "and, finally, force this issue permanently onto the national political agenda." Earth Day indeed increased environmental awareness in America, and in July of that year the Environmental Protection Agency was established by special executive order to regulate and enforce national pollution legislation.
1978 --- Bob Marley and the Wailers performed at the One Love Peace Concert in Jamaica. It was Marley's first public appearance in Jamaica since being wounded in an assassination attempt a year and a half earlier.
- 1992 --- Dozens of sewer explosions in Guadalajara, Mexico, kill more than 200 people and damage 1,000 buildings. The series of explosions was caused by a gas leak, the warning signs of which were ignored by the Mexican government and the national oil company. Three days prior to the explosions, the residents of a working-class neighborhood in Guadalajara noticed a foul smell in the air. The people experienced stinging in their eyes and throats. Some felt nauseous. Despite complaints, the local authorities did not seriously investigate the issue. At about 11:30 a.m., a series of powerful explosions began. They took place in an area about one mile long and seemed to come from 35 feet below-ground along the sewer system. Twenty square blocks of Guadalajara were leveled or seriously damaged. In two places, craters nearly 300 feet deep opened up, swallowing the surrounding buildings, roads, cars and buses.
- 1997 --- Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori orders a commando assault on the Japanese ambassador's home, hoping to free 72 hostages held for more than four months by armed members of the Tupac Amaru leftist rebel movement. After secretly warning the hostages 10 minutes before the attack, the special forces team set off a blast in a tunnel underneath the building, which surprised the rebels and killed eight of the 14 immediately. The rest of the elite soldiers attacked from several other directions, overwhelming the remaining terrorists. All 14 rebels were killed in the assault, including the leader, Nestor Cerpa, who was shot multiple times. Only one hostage, Supreme Court Justice Carlos Giusti, was killed in the attack, and of the several soldiers wounded during the rescue operation, two later died from their injuries.
- 2002 --- Filippino President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo ordered a state of emergency in the city of General Santos in response to a series of bombing attacks the day before. The attacks were blamed on Muslim extremists.
- 2004 --- Pat Tillman, who gave up his pro football career to enlist in the U.S. Army after the terrorist attacks of September 11, is killed by friendly fire while serving in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. The Army initially maintained that Tillman and his unit were ambushed by enemy forces. Tillman was praised as a national hero, awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart medals and posthumously promoted to corporal. Weeks later, Tillman’s family learned his death had been accidental. His parents publicly criticized the Army, saying they had been intentionally deceived by military officials who wanted to use their son as a patriotic poster boy. They believed their son’s death was initially covered up by military officials because it could’ve undermined support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
- 2010 --- The Deepwater Horizon oil platform, operated by BP, sank into the Gulf of Mexico two days after a massive explosion that killed 11 workers.
- Birthdays
- Immanuel Kant
- Emily Davies
- Charles Mingus
- Yehudi Menuhin
- J. Robert Oppenheimer
- Julius Sterling Morton
- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
- John Waters
- Charlotte Rae
- Jack Nicholson
- Peter Frampton
- Paul Carrack
- Byron Allen
- Queen Isabella I-Spain
- Vladimir Nabakov
- Eddie Albert
- Glen Campbell